


A Strange Trip Into The Black Dimension

by ZetsPsych



Category: Original Work
Genre: B-Movies, Cannibalism, Explicit Language, Horror, Near Future, Other, POV First Person, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 11:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZetsPsych/pseuds/ZetsPsych
Summary: You check the time after turning off your phone alarm. It's 6:31 AM on the morning of October 17th, 2089.Your morning routine goes just as always, and you're completely ready to get to work.You get to the nearest station in order to teleport to your workplace and get by another day on your desk job.But today is not a day like every other one.Your trip takes a strange turn into an uncharted place you've never seen before.And nothing will be the same again.





	A Strange Trip Into The Black Dimension

> Act 1.

You hear your alarm clock going off with a sweet tune that reminds you of your childhood.

Somehow you find the strength to move your arm and grab your iPhone 81 pro max, gifted to you after that weird deal Apple made with the government in order to more easily find their workers and prevent intelligence leaks.  
You check the time. It's 6:31 AM on the morning of October 17th, 2089.  
Your one room apartment is everything you dreamt of while growing up on the countryside. Life was wild back then, way before the ministry of science threw off the then democratically elected president of Tera2, on the ever-growing, kind of recently discovered Salva70RE Galaxy.

After taking a quick shower and dressing up with the regulatory gray suit uniform, you take a look at yourself in the mirror, and realize you actually woke up feeling well rested this morning.  
"May be time for a little change", you think. You hastily move towards your closet. "Yeah, today I'll wear the red leather jacket mom gifted me a while ago. Haven't had the chance to use it. I can take it off when I get to the office."  
With a renewed liking for life and their little pleasures, you step into the TeleTerminal in the corner of the block where your apartment building is located.

After years of struggling with designing an efficient transportation system, the Ministry of Science invented a teleportation system, in the simplest words possible.  
After testing and fine tuning for a year, simple stations with touch screen computers were installed where bus stops used to be, and after typing the number of the destination terminal, you'd appear there in less than 5 seconds.  
Obviously, the system had some hidden codes and backdoors for people working on the executive branch of the government. You were used to them, since you landed a job at the Help and Support desk of the Philosophy Ministry. You've been using, and helping people use the system, for more than a year now.

Although today was kinda different.

As always, you typed in the P-735 code that would teleport you to the front of the Philosophy Ministry. Your vision would go black for a second, and you'd feel like you woke up again, but instead of seeing your ceiling, you'd smell the fresh aromas of the Pine tress growing next to the TeleTerminal station.

Oh, yes. How you loved the sight of the white building erecting through the mountains, surrounded by a forest, as if you were entering a magical tower protected by a wizard and their pet dragon.

But your vision isn't going back.

"huh. Maybe some lag on the system because of the high density of people traveling?". That was odd. It would be the oddest thing. Cause you always get onto the TeleTerminal at 6:55 AM, and this had never happened before.

Everything you can see is black.  
You start feeling kind anxious. "Maybe the jacket?", but, seriously? The system isn't nearly as advanced to detect what you're wearing, so it's impossible that-  
Between the darkness, you see something move in the corner of your eye.  
\- He... Hello?  
You can hear your voice echoing all over the place. But you still can't see anything.  
\- Who's there?  
Nothing but darkness.  
\- Help?  
...  
\- Help!? HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! WHAT'S GOING ON, WHERE AM-  
Suddenly, you can see again. You're lying on the ground.

\- What the fuck-  
You check your phone.  
8:35 AM.  
Feeling confused, scared, and disoriented, you check your surroundings. You can see the Ministery building on the distance. You stand up as fast as possible and start running towards your work place. It's the first time ever you'll be late for work. The shift started at 7. Fuck, you have a meeting in 15 minutes. If you could just run faster, you could-  
"Wait. Where is my red jacket?"

> Act 2.

In 2080, the government was taken off by the newly created Ministry of Science. The goal of the Ministry was to find creative solutions to everyday problems and improve on people's lives, so naturally the first thing they did was a coup de tat. As people was frightened by the change, a Ministry of Philosophy was stablished as a counter measure to the "mad scientist" who forced the then president Jack Mush to resign and take a forceful vacation on Phobos, the prime destination for all your relaxation needs on Mars.  
During the next 9 years, the quality of life of the citizens living on the former mining colonies of the Rock based planet improved drastically. Government officials were democratically elected, being 5 on each Ministry, representing every district on the dwarf planet, current population of 20 million according to the last census.  
After you somehow made it to a tense meeting between philosophers and scientists, you had a cup of coffee at your desk, while browsing the front page of YouTube at your computer.

\- Oh hey, I didn't see you get here in the morning.   
\- Oh, hi Gers - you said while putting down your cup of coffee. - yeah, I had a weird problem while getting here.   
\- What, you forgot the terminal number and appeared somewhere else?   
\- Of course I didn't, you think I'm stupid?   
\- Maybe.   
\- Lord.   
\- Hey, did you catch the games announced at E3 last night?  
\- Yeah, though I am not really excited about any of them. I've barely have had any time to play video games lately.   
\- If this story gets into a sex story, I don't wanna hear it.   
\- What? Oh come on, you think I'm Carl? I've just been really busy, and-  
\- Hey, come on. Don't speak ill of the dead, or they'll come haunt you.   
\- Carl? Haunting me? Man, fuck Carl. He can't even- wait, what do you mean?   
\- Haven't you heard? Carl's been missing since the last week.   
\- What?   
\- Yeah, no joke. Check Twitter if you don't believe me.   
After some seconds, you decide to indulge your curiosity and you search for news on the platform. Turns out 8 people have disappeared during October.   
\- Man, what the fuck.   
\- I know, right? It's fucking creepy.   
\- I mean, we live in a damn near Utopia. How are people still kidnapping people on 2089?  
\- I dunno. There's some weird shit going on.   
\- Oh come on dude. Don't start with your conspiracies again.   
\- Look, I'm just saying, the 8 people that have disappeared worked for the Ministries. Are you absolutely sure they didn't discover something that no one was supposed to know about?   
\- Dude, fuck off. I won't fall for your conspiracy stuff. Next you'll say Tera2 is flat.   
\- How do you know that isn't exactly what they found out?   
You both laugh at the suggestion and decide to go back to work. 

You didn't even notice the clock before you realized it was 8:04 PM. The workload was way too high and you almost didn’t have time for lunch.  
After picking your stuff, you leave the place and walk towards the closest empty TeleTerminal.  
There’s a feeling of uneasiness. You can’t really forget the weird experience during the morning. You look around you and realize you’re alone.  
“I mean... what are the chances...”  
Mark the code.  
Press the button.  
Hope for the best.

In the blink of an eye, you appear in the corner of the block near your apartment building. After a big sigh of relief, you just walk towards your apartment and try to leave the day behind.  
“Okay I definitely need to play some video games today.”

October 18th, 2089. 6:55 AM.  
Today you’re waiting in line in order to use the teleporter.  
“Being honest, this is making me anxious.”  
You suddenly remember that there’s another terminal a couple of blocks away.  
“Whatever, I’ll just walk. Yesterday nobody noticed I was late.”  
People are so used to you being punctual that they don’t even check, they just assume you’re working at your desk. Such is the life of a desk job.

You walk trying to distract yourself from your feelings. You notice some kids riding their skates and saying weird phrases. “What’s this? The 1990s?”  
“Huh, that’s kind of a good idea.”  
You turn on Spotify on your phone and play a song by The Prodigy. Your grandpa taught you about old electronic music, and how people used to dance and consume drugs at weird events called “raves”.  
You wish you could’ve experienced that and concluded that you were born in the wrong generation.  
Thinking about something and nothing at all, you mechanically arrived at the terminal, pushed in the code, and pressed the button without realizing.

When you realized, it was too late.

> Act 3.

You’re lying on the ground again.  
Your eyes are open, but you don’t recognize the place. You can tell you’re next to a wall. As your senses come back to you, you feel some sort of cold sand below you.  
As you get back on your feet, your vision adjusts to the level of darkness. You’re inside an empty room with a single door.  
There’s some weird sound coming out of the room.  
Your breathing turns heavier. You can feel some pressure on your chest.  
Luckily, the Ministry would arm all their workers. You take your Seburo M-10 pistol out of the holster you hide inside your Suit, and slowly open the door.

A large corridor with various doors cover your sight. The floor is absolutely covered in the cold sand you felt earlier. It seems like you’re in an old, abandoned building.  
“How the hell did I get here? Did I input the incorrect code?”  
You walk a few steps. The door behind you seems to be the end of the corridor. You walk towards the next door, but there’s nothing inside.  
Actually, all of these rooms are empty.  
“It looks like... someone forced the doors to get out.”  
Most of them had scratch marks. Some had bullet holes.  
You sharpen your senses and walk forward.

The corridor opens in a big room. You can’t see the ceiling nor the walls.  
You can’t make sense of the situation.  
“What kind of fucking-AHH”  
Something grabbed your leg!  
You move it violently, but its grip is too tight.  
\- Help... me...  
The cry of help from whatever is grabbing you right now doesn’t reach your ears.  
You can’t think of what do to.  
Your arm tightens.  
You don’t have options.  
There is no choice.  
You need to move.  
You shoot in the direction of whatever the hell is holding you there.

The gunshot sound echoed through the halls of the building. Actually, it seems you may have damaged your eardrums somewhat.  
But you can move your leg freely now.

You crouch to inspect what did you just shoot and probably killed.  
But your mind didn’t process the image at the instant you saw.  
It seemed like your whole brain turned off in order to avoid the scene in front of you.  
Only bits and pieces of information made it through your eyes.  
You see a lot of blood. A hole. Probably from where your bullet struck.  
It’s sphere shaped. Kind of like a head.  
A head connected to a body.  
A body with a face.  
An awfully familiar face.  
The face you see every day in the morning before going out to work.  
It looks exactly like you.  
It is you.  
And that you is lying on the ground.  
With a bullet in the head.  
Wearing the red jacket you lost yesterday.

You start screaming before you could realize. You had fallen to the ground, and instinctively are moving away from the body.  
Your stomach feels heavy and you really want to throw up.  
It’s not every day that you get to kill yourself, quite literally speaking.  
The tears won’t stop.  
How do you make them stop.  
You can’t stop staring at the dead body.  
But while doing so, you notice something.  
At a distance, a pair of eyes is glowing in the dark.  
And they’re growing bigger.  
Really fast.  
Something’s coming for you!  
\- Holy shit!  
You scream and shoot right between the eyes.  
It falls next to you.

Another you.  
But this time, the mouth is completely deformed.  
It seems like they grew some sort of animal teeth.  
There’s dry blood all over their mouth.

“Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?  
Am I going insane? Did I just shot another clone of me?”  
Snap out of it!  
You hit yourself on the cheek. You gotta move.  
Fast.  
You don’t know where you are.  
\- I got to get out of here!  
Exactly. Good.  
Now move.

You hug the wall while advancing.  
Slowly, but sure.  
There ought to be a way out of there. You just gotta find it.  
“How long have I been here?”  
I have no idea.  
I’m but a voice in your head.  
Were you ever really out of here?  
“How would I know?”  
Focus.  
“Right.”  
Right in front of you.  
“There seems to be... a pack of... me?”

5 clones of you are laying in the ground, eating ferociously.  
They’re cannibalizing another clone of you.  
“It would be best if I moved unnoticed”.  
You get on your stomach and start advancing quietly.  
Thanks to the pack being completely distracted by the food, you could sneak out of there, and reach a door.

But there’s someone standing in front of the door.  
“Let me guess. It’s me.”  
It’s you.  
But this one is different. This one is standing straight in their two legs.

You get up, and gently tap your shoulder- their shoulder.  
\- Hey... are you okay?  
No response.  
\- Seriously, answer me.  
\- I...  
They won’t look at you. They’re actively avoiding to look at you.  
\- I need to-  
\- Shut up!  
They screamed in the same tone of voice as you.  
\- I went completely mad! I can’t go on anymore!  
\- I just want to get out of here! Maybe if we cooperate  
\- We can’t cooperate!  
They turn around to confront you.  
They’re missing their right eye and left arm.  
\- I should have never taken this job! This is the worst thing that ever happened to me!  
\- Calm down! I’m you! I can help you, we can-  
\- Silence! You know nothing!  
Their screams where too loud.  
You back off as soon as they take their gun out.  
\- Okay, chill, we need to-  
\- SHUT. UP!  
Without you could reply to them, they blew their brains out.  
“Oh, fuck.”  
You feel absolutely nothing.  
You’ve killed yourself many more times that you could joke about.  
Turns out you’re kinda insensitive at this point.  
You just take the bullets out of their gun and save them in your pocket. Keep walking.

You would’ve loved to say “minutes turned to hours”, but you couldn’t tell the passage of time in such a dark place. Obviously, your phone didn’t travel with you, so you just went by.  
A long time might have passed.  
5 minutes might have passed.  
Did it matter? It seemed like you were walking through your own personal hell.  
You kept killing clones of yourself in order to advance.  
You kept feeding off their corpses.  
Maybe you already had become one of them.  
Maybe you were never out of here.  
A never-ending nightmare. No way to wake up.  
You begin to understand the one that shot themselves.  
But you don’t even entertain that thought.  
You just keep on walking.  
And walking.  
And killing.  
And walking.

A weird thing crosses your closed eyes.  
A shadow forms on your eyelids.  
You are woken up. Same place. Same cold sand.  
But something is different.  
There’s a light shining through  
“What...”  
There’s a light shining through, jackass.  
\- What do you mean-  
THERE’S A LIGHT SHINING THROUGH.  
You get on your feet hastily.  
\- Holy hell, a light!  
You start running towards the light. Walking. Running.  
Crying.  
Panting.  
Sweating.  
The light gets bigger and bigger.  
You’re right in front of it.  
You can touch it.  
Shall you go through?  
You’ll be leaving the darkness behind.  
You have no idea of what will be on the other side.  
Shall you go through?  
Everything you’ve experienced might be deleted.  
All your traumas may appear on your dreams.  
There’s no way you’re forgetting this.  
Shall you go through?  
\- OF COURSE I’m going through!

You go through the light.

Have fun!

> Epilogue.

You hear your alarm clock going off with a sweet tune that reminds you of your childhood. A song by electronic music band The Prodigy.

Somehow you find the strength to move your arm and grab your Google Pixel 3, gifted to you after that weird deal Google made with the company in order to more easily find their workers and prevent intelligence leaks, since people have been paying a lot of attention to what your team has been doing.  
You check the time. It's 6:31 AM on the morning of October 17th, 2019.

After taking a quick shower and dressing up with the reglementary gray suit uniform, you take a look at yourself in the mirror, and realize you actually woke up feeling well rested this morning.  
You think it may be time for a change, but prefer not to.  
You have a big day ahead today.  
You’re meeting with a team of scientist in order to present your latest project, the one that will put you on the history books.  
Nothing will separate you from this moment. You’re owed this.

In a big, white room, a large group of people is gathered to hear you speak.  
You don’t even look at their faces. You don’t care.  
You connect your laptop to an HDMI cable, and set up a PowerPoint presentation.

\- Ladies and gentlemen, investors and scientists, I present to you the future... Today.  
The slide showed a big logo that reads “TeleTerminals”.  
You can hear people giggling.  
\- Yeah, the name is stupid. But wait till you listen to this. Me and my time have discovered the way to create a wormhole through dimensions.  
The whole room went silent. Everyone was staggered.  
\- That’s more like it.  
You begin to move in front of a slide showing a big electrical diagram.  
\- Turns out, we already live in multiple dimensions. We just never notice it.  
Our brains produce electrical resonances far beyond the scope of what our machinery can detect. All our brains are interconnected in a single network. Humans have been trying to find a way to interface to them for generations... But our team thinks outside the box. Literally. You don’t need a human for what I am about to show you.  
The next slide shows a simple smart phone.  
\- This smartphone is special, because it creates a real, working image of a human being. A “back up”, if you will. This backup can be updated, recreated, and destroyed, whenever you want. It includes organs, feelings, memories... A human being, from head to toe.  
\- This is preposterous!  
A fat, bald man with glasses stood up.  
\- You can’t storage a human being on a fixed-size electrical storage. Also, you can’t create another human from that back up! Where will the energy from the previous person go? Where does the energy and matter from the new person comes from?  
You smile.  
\- You’re right. You can’t. That’s why we prefaced this with the dimensions thing.  
You change the slide, which shows building blueprints.  
\- This is the key to our operation, people. This is the Black Dimension. A place where energy and matter doesn’t flow in the same way it does in our dimension. It’s a pocket space between layers of space-time flux. We found a way to store our data there.  
Everyone started chatting among themselves and shouting stuff at you.  
Once again, you couldn’t care less. You knew you were right.  
\- TeleTerminal is more than a simple use of it, it’s the way to explore it. It being what’s beyond our comprehension. We could teleport people by storing a copy of themselves, sending the original to the Black Dimension, and recreating them at their destination point. They will never know how. They’ll just know they’ve been teleported, and voila. We’ll store the copies. We’ll use them to explore the Black Dimension. We will discover the way to-  
\- Wait. You’re telling me you don’t understand what this “black dimension” of yours is?  
\- I mean, we have a pretty clear idea of what it is, but you may not like it.  
\- What would that be?  
You look at everyone on their faces.  
\- Hell.  
Nobody says anything. A very low voice could be heard saying “you gotta be kidding me.”  
\- Now, now, I know you people wouldn’t believe me, so I have a functional test right...  
Wait for it...  
I’m kinda tuning it.........

Here.

I hope you all brought your smartphones today; we’re going on a trip.

We’ve already made a backup of your data.  
You don’t know it, but right now there’s a copy of you going back home, thinking that they left the place after they saw the most stupid TED talk of their lives.  
But you have no idea what’s in store for you.

Cause all of us are going to explore hell.  
And I’m the only one who knows the way in or out of here.

Welcome to the Black Dimension.  
Have Fun!

**Author's Note:**

> This short, plain bad, B-horror-movie tier story was inspired and written on my phone while stuck on the subway train for 30+ minutes. The service is somewhere between bad and mediocre, and our country recently had a public transportation fare rise just a week ago. I started thinking that I live an hour away from my work place, and how I literally have no other options in order to move travel everyday. I came up with a teleportation system half grounded on reality, but intermediately realized that even if we had the technology to achieve it, the authorities would find a way to screw it up.


End file.
